June 2010

Gerald Laird Likely to Lose at His Uniform-Number Shell Game

On May 29, Gerald Laird changed his uniform number from 8 to 12 in the hope his offensive luck would change. Who could blame him for trying something — anything — to inject some life into his bat.

How’s it worked? He’s 2 for 16, or .125 since the switcheroo.

Before he had clubhouse guy Jim Schmakel sew him up a new uni, Laird was 16 for 101, or .158. And his overall stats for Laird while wearing #8 — the ones we’ll compare below with his predecessors are: .184 avg., 5 HR, .271 OBP, .553 OPS

This uniform-change ploy got me thinking about recent Tigers players that wore number 8 or number 12 to see which had the best offensive numbers and if, based on recent history (going back to 1995ish), Laird might luck out by some numerical karma.

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Final Thoughts: The Call Was Blown, Now Leave It Alone

Armando Galarraga‘s brilliance on Wednesday night has been tarnished enough by a bad call.

Any move by official scorers, Major League Baseball, the Players’ Union or Amnesty International to “correct” the umpiring gaffe and hand Galarraga a perfect game 18 hours later will tarnish his performance even more.

Isn’t one asterisk enough?

Seriously, how can the official scorer charge an error on the penultimate play? He can’t ding Miguel Cabrera for the throw, it was fine. He can’t penalize Galarraga either; he made the catch, he tagged the base.

For me, the bottom line is that this can only get worse if “they” start tinkering with the results. In many ways, this game will be even more memorable because of Jim Joyce‘s goof.

Think about it, even if Galarraga never wins another major-league game he’ll always be remembered as that guy who threw the perfect game that the umpire blew. Not ideal but not Bill Buckner either.

And what, pray tell, is Galarraga expected to do if he was suddenly — what’s the appropriate word here, awarded, handed, reimbursed? — a perfect game? It makes no sense to try to right this wrong.

It stinks, yes, but it’s how baseball works — or doesn’t sometimes.

Armando Galarraga’s Near-Perfection By the Numbers

What has gotten lost in all the calls for do-overs and commissioner over-rides is the remarkable precision with which Armando Galarraga pitched against the Indians Wednesday night.

A quick look at the bottom-line stats are stunning on their own:

88 pitches
67 strikes
21 balls

As ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick points out, that pitch count includes the five pitches Galarraga threw to Trevor Crowe for the final out.

Awesome, right? Well, it actually gets better.

Thanks to a Pitcher Report Card produced by the good folks at Inside Edge, we gain insight into these nuggets of statistical goodness:

86 percent of Galarraga’s first pitches were thrown for strikes
93 percent of his first two pitches were strikes
75 percent of his fastballs were strikes
77 percent of off-speed pitchers were strikes
93 percent of two-strike at bats became outs
4 percent of Indians at-bats went to three-ball counts

In fact, out of the 23 categories Inside Edge uses to grade a pitcher’s performance, Galarraga earned an A+ in 20 of them. The three in which he fell short were:

50 percent of 1-and-1 counts became 1-and-2 counts (the MLB average is 54 percent) – Grade: C+
7 percent of outs were strikeouts in four pitches or less (MLB average, 12 percent) – Grade: C-
7 percent of Galarraga’s pitches were swing-and-miss strikes (MLB average, 15 percent) – Grade: F

As you might have guessed, Inside Edge graded the outing an A.

Galarraga’s surgical approach to the Cleveland lineup also included first-pitch strikes to every right-handed batter he faced (73 percent to lefties). Remarkable.

For a while, perhaps a long while, baseball fans will remember this game for what happened when the 27th batter hit a ground ball to Miguel Cabrera. That’s fine.

But I hope Tigers fans will also remember how tremendous — rather, how virtually perfect Armando Galarraga’s pitching was on June 2, 2010.

So Who Is Billy Buckner?

It’s pretty clear that the Tigers don’t have big plans for newly acquired Billy Buckner.

Yesterday Dave Dombrowski described the right hander’s role in the organization thusly:

“He gives us depth at Toledo.”

Didn’t they say the same thing about poor Mike Hessman?

Given Buckner’s numbers — a 6.56 ERA for the Diamondbacks in 29 games (16 starts) in parts of three seasons — and a 0-3, 11.08 ERA record this season, you can’t argue with the Tigers doing nothing more than simply plugging a roster opening at Toledo with Buckner. And, because tonight’s starter, Armando Galarraga, appears set to stay in Detroit for a while the Mud Hens needed a body.

So, play along as we noodle the idea of Buckner arriving in Detroit some time this summer. Is he as bad as his stats would indicate?

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